Gents Mag 1842 part 1 p.5

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	Gentleman's Magazine 1842 part 1 p.5 in the matter subject. But the IMAGINATION comprehendeth only the figure without the matter. Reason," continues the old Bard, "surmounteth Imagination, and comprehendeth, by universal looking, (universali consideratione,) the common Speces;* but the eye of Intelligence (INTELLECTUS) is higher, for it surmounteth the environning (ambitum) of the universitie (universe), and looketh over that by pure subtilty of thought." And afterwards, in fuller description:- "IMAGINATION, albeit so that it taketh of wit (ex sensibus visendi), the beginning to be seen and formen the figures, algates, although that wit ne were not present, yet it environneth and comprehendeth all things sensible, not by reason sensible of deeming, but reason imaginative." (Non sensibili, sed imaginaria ratione judicandi.) In these passages, which exhibit some of the earliest efforts in the English language to stammer out the accents of philosophy, the word Imaginatio is used as the name of a power of the mind; it is the Imagination, - literally from the original; but in a subsequent passage, our countryman, - as if in apprehension of failing to express the true meaning of the word with which he, perhaps, was intimately acquainted, but which is wholly unwarranted by the Latin text. (Met. 4). "Philosophers" (he writes) "that highten Stoiciens" (i.e. are called Stoics) "wend that Images and sensibilities, that is to say, sensible imaginations, or els, imaginations of sensible things, were imprinted into souls fro bodies without forth." Now for this repetition of "sensible imaginations, or els, imaginations of sensible things," there are in Boethius no other words than sensus and imagines. It was not, indeed, till a far later period that that which includes the Roman philosophy, that the Latin IMAGINATIO was advanced to an equal fulness of importance with the Greek PHANTASIA. In the middle ages, we find their co-efficiency completely established; and the questions very formally discussed, whether this power differed at all from memory, or could, in any respect, be distinguished from the common sense. All this was, no doubt, well known to the learned of our own country; but the old steel-capt philosopher of Malmesbury, though he employs the two nouns to be the same signification, yet, following the steps of Aristotle. he defines Phantasy, or Imagination, to be - "Conception remaining, and by little and little decaying from and after the act of sense."† The words are now traced from their native homes, and implanted as synonyms in our own language; but, that they were not unanimously received as such, the poem on the Immortality of the Soul, by Sir John Davies, a contemporary of Hobbes, is sufficient proof. Davies, who was undoubtedly a very learned man, had a system to maintain, and in accordance with it, after devoting a section to each of the Senses, Seeing, Hearing, Taste, Smell, and Touch, he allots one to the IMAGINATION, or the Common Sense, and another to FANTASY. Of the former he writes:- "These are the outward instruments of sense; These are the guards which every thing musts pass, Ere it approach the mind;'s intelligence, Or touch the fantasy, wit's looking glass.
	* The edition of Islip, 1598, reads Speache, and this is followed by Chalmers. The original is Speciem. † Ή δε Φαυτασια εστι αισθησις τις ασθευης. Aristotle Opera. Du Val, ii. 536.
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